Institute of Failure

by Alex Hetherington, 5 Feb 2008

It’s Tuesday and I keep thinking today is Monday. I am out of time. We are filling up the Year Planner like two PAs; dates to remember, days planned with meetings and get-ins for the show, dates to work out the performance, dates to send artwork to printers and framers, black paint and black felt curtains. I realize I go to New York in three weeks, and then we are heading North for a scheduled project, I am jet-lagged now. I hate using the telephone, but I have calls to make and as usual I blurt out senseless information to people I don’t know trying to get a point across.

Anyway I have decided to foreclose my idea for a performance group. I have had no interest in this at all and it seems pointless to continue emailing out the flyers and information. I kinda like this though; it’s a good failure, I like the way it dissolved in front of me. I know we’ll just have to bring in outsiders, that it is just spectatorship here really. So without a single audition or any calls or emails or really any form of concrete support I can send this away as a disappearing act. I wonder if I really had the energy in the first place and whether anyone would want to work with such a vague set of ideas. I am still on the hunt for a rehearsal space for my existent cast, so will proceed to investigate this. I may have to rehearse outside of Falkirk entirely. I like Matthew Goulish and Tim Etchells project the Institute of Failure and will research this as an element in the demise of my non-existent performance group that only ever existed in my imagination. I can see them but they are not real. So we have the original House/Lights crowd plus additional cast and crew more on this very soon.

More videos appeared as did some Falkirk archive video footage from Scottish Screen; it is clips of film footage from the 1930s. Dan Mailer came in with his parachute jump videos. The proof for the Village Voice came in with Mr. Printer… We made some more connections and enquires/discussions about the screen(s) for BIF and everything is now covered in gold.

I retrieved House/Lights script from the bag we used at ESW, I found a DVD deck in there! and tons of cables, I also found the original Gertrude Stein book which has Dr Faustus Lights the Lights and other garbage/preciousness that I collect, crappy Cds, a copy of Last House on the Left (Wes Craven), Catherine Sullivan’s catalog for The Chittendens, ancient materials for this moment, autechre CDS, candy from San Francisco. I reference everything and nothing and it’s all covered in gold and dirt.